Darwin
Olga’s Devil

Charles Darwin was none other than the Devil.

This I learned very early on.

Olga, my mother’s mother (mormor, in Swedish), had cut out and saved a now-yellowing and brittle newspaper picture of Darwin, all black cape and black bowler hat—from under which rim hated you his piercing, devilish eyes—and long white devilish beard, to boot. This was a photo meant to scare children. This, she would say, holding this image up for me to see, is the Devil. The Devil, I tell you, for he claims that God did not create Heaven and Earth. He laughs at the Garden of Eden, where God created Adam and Eve. The he laughs at God for driving them out of Eden for befriending him, for Darwin was the snake.

And today, she not so much tells me as cleverly implies that Darwin lurks behind every dark tree and rock and is ready to leap out and eat children who aren’t good, for the Devil’s appetite is bottomless and he will not be satisfied until there are no more children on this earth.

She was serious about this. Deadly. At least, that is how I read it at three or four or five or six, pick any age, when she once again told me about Darwin and the Devil, about the man who tried to kill Jesus and denounce God. Yes, yes, the Devil. But Jesus is stronger than Darwin, he wrestled him to the ground in the desert, so you stay away from him, don’t listen to what they tell you in school; they don’t know. Only Jesus knows.

As for me, what could I do? She was my loving grandmother, for heaven’s sake, and I was her much-loved angel child, as she called me. Of course, I believed her, and for years afterward—into my teens, even—I held a very guarded opinion of Charles Darwin. Whenever he was mentioned in school, and he was, naturally, the image would flash: The Devil, an image I’d have to consciously brush aside to place the man in a more sensible and favorable light.

It took thirty-odd years to completely shed the Darwin equals Devil image and to see the man for the clear-headed scientist that he was.

Young children, I see now, are so incredibly impressionable, especially by loving grandmothers.

And while we’re on the subject of Olga and Devils, another historical figure to make it onto my grandmother’s shit list was one Jonas Alstromer—popularly, if incorrectly, seen as the Swedish father of the humble potato—whom she blamed for every drop of alcohol (the Devil’s brew, no less) made and consumed in Sweden.

Actually, Jonas Alstromer did not, as generally held, bring potatoes to Sweden, but he certainly popularized their cultivation. So, why is he another Devil, or at least the Devil’s cousin, in Olga’s eyes?

Well, that’s because, in Sweden, potatoes are often used in distilling what we call fire wine—our Swedish national hard liquor distilled from potatoes, grain, or, in the olden days, wood cellulose, which clocks in at about 30% to 38% alcohol content by volume—serious booze in other words. Olga was convinced that Alstromer brought potatoes to Sweden with the purpose of distilling and selling alcohol, of course—the Devil’s clever plan—and was therefore the root cause of fire wine and all the misery it brought.

Hearing Olga tell it, and I heard her tell it a lot, without Jonas Alstromer alcohol would never have become such a scourge throughout Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century Sweden.

Now, I did come to find out later that Olga’s father had spent most of the family’s fortunes and income on drink, so no wonder she didn’t quite see eye to eye with fire wine and potatoes.

But at three or four or five or six, to be utterly convinced that these were very, very, very bad men indeed, that’s what still amazes me today.

Then again, this from the same woman who arranged for my mother to have all her teeth pulled and replaced by dentures at eighteen. Mom was pregnant with me and the going folk wisdom at the time in this somewhat backward backwater village of Mellansel was that pregnant women will always have trouble with their teeth; best thing to do: pull them all and replace them with dentures.

This was actually and horrifyingly done to my mother. She wore dentures for the rest of her life, of course—you never grow a third set of teeth.

I cannot even imagine the state of sanity of the doctor or dentist who undertook this unforgivable violence perpetrated on a young, pregnant girl.

Well, that’s Olga for you. An enigma. She loved me more than just about anything, and I loved her. In my eyes, she could do nothing wrong and she always told the truth.

Enigma, indeed.

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